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While scrolling through tech websites earlier today I came across something pretty cool: a website called Fletch Creations. Fletch Creations is producing Combo-Sensing LED inserts for Super-Tips pens. For the uninitiated, Pen Spinning (or ‘pen mawashi’ in Japan where the pastime has been popular since the 1970’s) is a form of contact juggling involving the deft manipulation/spinning of a pen in various combinations.

What Fletch Creations has done is to create a neat little LED insert that fits into Super-Tips pens—the pens preferred in most Pen Spinning circles—that has 3 lights that can be lit up in succession increasingly complex patterns depending upon the speed and combinations that the spinner is able to achieve. Whereas I struggle to get more than one blinking LED to light up, highlighting my Lobster Boy-like manual dexterity, my high-school friend Chris is able to produce a better light-show than Timothy Leary ever saw on one of his best hallucinogen benders. Needless to say the color combos he was able to achieve were pretty impressive and emphasized the extent to which you can take pen spinning. Fletch Creations has come up with an original idea that can add enjoyment to an already entertaining medium. It may also allow me to appear a lot hipper when conversing with my Vampire Weekend-listening teenage relatives. “So, you kids dig this internets thing right? I really enjoy that Friendster…” Well, there may be no helping me but anyone else should see a definite up-tick in their street-cred. Check ‘em out.